Books: Twain Meet

Kipling's scriptural utterance (that "East is East, and West is West,
and never the twain shall meet") is made to appear more pontifical than
profound by Authoress Wain's House of Exile, an autobiographical
record of how a U. S. woman became an adopted member of an ancient,
aristocratic Chinese family. Readers of Authoress Waln's book will
feel that Kipling's quotation should be amended: for "East" read
"Boxers"; for "West," "Little Englanders."

Nora Waln's ancestors, Quaker merchants of Philadelphia, had long
traded amicably with the...